I have been fiddling around with my sound recently and have been trying for a warmer sounding black metal tone (Alda, Wittr, etc). My equipment consists of a Peavey Stereo Chorus 400, Ibanez RG270 with Seymour Duncans, an MT-2, and Deltalab delay. I have been contemplating buying a Boss reverb and delay pedal.

The tube amp idea is definitely good, although I'd also like to point out that how you play the amp will affect how it sounds. Using more low end will help to give a warmer sound, especially if you are strumming the chords in a bit of a doom sense rather than doing fast tremolo. Do some experimenting with your playing and with your equipment, and see what you come up with. If you need a new amp, I suggest going for a tube amp as it will help give those warm tones you are looking for, as well as beautiful cleans

I have been looking into getting a tube amp. As it is right now, my project is one man and I will most likely not be playing live anytime soon. I usually just put treble near max and have mids at 1 and lows at 5ish. It gets me a raw black metal tone, but I am wanting something else.

Alright...I've been playing for about 10 years, and you DON'T need a new amp just to get a "warm" tone. First, do the obvious. Mess with your EQ on your amp. To warm it up, just roll back the treble a tiny bit (and presence too if you have a knob for it), and turn up the mids. Adding a very small amount of chorus or delay will "thicken" it up a little more and add some depth. Maybe even get an EQ pedal so you can tweak your sound more if you want. You'd be surprised by how much EQ can change your overall tone.

If that's not producing the sound that you want, look at your guitar next. What kind of pickups are you using--actives (with battery) or passives? A warm sound can sometimes be hard to attain with active pickups like EMGs. Also, look into more warm sounding guitar strings like chrome strings, or nickel. Steel strings tend to sound very bright.

If you've done those things and still aren't happy, then I'd say just look into a new, more versatile amp, but I'm sure there's a way to get the sound you want with the equipment you have.

Hey man i own a peavey 6505 maybe i can help out a bit, if i'm correct the 160 is a solid state amp?Lows to 4 , mids to 6 , highs 6.5 , try and tweak with gain, to much gain will give you a thinner sound, while less will broaden it up, try and re-tweak your sound with reverb and presence knobs, the presence setting should give you that more of a filthy sludgy BM sound without losing to much of the mids.When recording be very carefull with gain! a common mistake is made that people use to much gain, resulting in a very thin sound!

Some low budget to nearly free solutions for your sound;- Try and downtune your guitar! if your guitar is set in "D" it will sound warmer and more heavy then in standard "E", if your going for the Drudkh sound even go as low as "C" or drop "C".- Try a heavier gauge guitar string! Thicker strings give a heavier sound, my suggestion is try out a 0.10 or 0.11, as mentioned before in this topic try different materials!- Get a Analog Boss EQ pedal, for finetuning your sound! it is the most easy way to tweak your sound by marginal bits!- Get a good Analog Tubescreamer in case of Tube amps, they will crank that amp into oblivion making it sound wider and heavier!- Stay clear away from any sort of digital pedals! Digital pedals SUCK, they sound digital, dry and dull, get analog pedals and when recording use Battery's! to gain as less humm as possible!

More expensive options;A Tube amp will give you a warmer sound however, and the choice for amps is huge!My sugestion overall would be is to go for a good second hand amp and a quality cabinet, some amp suggestions; Peavey 5150/6505, Mesa triple rec, Engl Fireball or even try a Engl Richie blackmore, it's more of a jazz/blues amp but it sounds very warm for black metal, recently borrowed 1 for recording and it blew my peavey out of the water in clearance and warm mids, i did still use the peavey though since it sounds like a rampage chainsaw when set up correctly.The huge pro's of a good amp is that you don't need all those crappy pedals, except for the minimum of a tubescreamer and an EQ pedal the rest is done though the pre-amps of the amp itself!You won't believe what is SAVED on money after i put a good chunk of money in a good amp! You can buy shitloads of pedals, but in the end they never really cut it! Save money on the pedals put it in a good amp!

As for cabs...go for a nice quality cab! Don't buy a standard marshall 1960A, they are good but the sound is lacking! I preferably use Orange cabs, they are a lot more clear and have a lot warmer sound.

Sorry for reviving a dead thread. I got a Peavey Supreme 160 recently. I am fiddling around with the settings. Any advice?

Hmm... I think the previous posts covers what I would say normally as far as the EQ goes. I might try tweaking the treble and presence a little though if you haven't done that already. Sometimes I'll turn the treble down just a little more than normal (1 o'clock) and turn up the presence just a tad higher (2 o'clock). It helps give you a little clarity without the treble being overbearing--which I've found is very easy to do in BM.

Ditto the gain advice that was given, too. If you're playing live as an only guitarist, then go ahead and turn up the gain a little bit, as your "distortion" might sound a little weak or thin on it's own, but if you're going to do multiple tracks for recording or will be playing with another guitarist, turn down the gain--it sounds so much better. I used to play with another guitarist back when I first started playing, and we both had Digitech effect processors... We both had scooped mids, and had super high gain effects. Needless to say, it sounded awful, and when we finally played with a drummer, we couldn't figure out why we couldn't hear our guitars at all. lol

The guitar is a mid-range instrument, so in order to come out in a mix (on a recording or a live situation), you need to have adequate mids set in the EQ. If you take it away, then you're going to be buried. That holds true to any amp you're using. Just tweak the EQ according to the speakers. One way you can do that is by making your EQ entirely flat, and then just listening to what comes out of the speakers. Is it muffled? Is there too much treble? Not enough gain? Just start tweaking from there. Hope that helps.

What I find that works best is to do the classic "scooping" of the mids and boosting of the highs and lows with the EQ pedal, then I boost the lows and mids with conservative highs on the Peavey. This is what gives me my tone and I play Death/Black metal. The only difference I do when recording is that I turn up the highs on the Peavey just a tad (like 1 or 2 notches). And like others have stated, EASY on the gain when recording and playing at loud volumes!!

So I highly recommend getting yourself an EQ pedal (MXR makes the Kerry King version, which I'm extremely happy with, and the standard 10-band). Other than that, it's just a bit of tweaking the eq on the amp to match the cab/speakers. YOU DO NOT NEED A TUBE AMP, but if you want a professional quality tone, you WILL.

As for cabs...go for a nice quality cab! Don't buy a standard marshall 1960A, they are good but the sound is lacking! I preferably use Orange cabs, they are a lot more clear and have a lot warmer sound.

I totally disagree with your statement. I use a Marshall 1960b cab. The reason is that I tried out the Orange cabs, a Mesa cab, some custom thing, along with some other recommended cabinets. I found that the Orange cabs had too much bottom-end and really through shit loads of mud in my tone. I use a Peavey 6505+ by the way; Bands such as Amon Amarth, Trivium, Machine Head, and Diamond Plate use the 6505+ and Marshall 1960b combo. If the pros use it, it must not be "lacking."

everyone has their select tastes. I like how you keep refrencing the pros as if that's the only word anyone should take. Cause if that's the case there are also just as many 'pro' bands that use Orange Amps.

Why the hell would you use a Peavey 6505, ideal for its crisp mids/highs, with an Orange cab, known for its sludgy lows/mids?

Voorvader wrote:

YOU DO NOT NEED A TUBE AMP, but if you want a professional quality tone, you WILL.

Short-sighted and incorrect. Due to the cost of manufacturing, most cheap/entry-level amps are solid state and tube amps tend to exclusively be higher end stuff in the broad range of amps, but there are some amazing solid state amps. The Peavey Bandit is famous for being inexpensive and lending a great tone to early Swe-death as well as Pytten's productions, and the Ampeg SS series are great too (SLK knows them well).

Voorvader wrote:

Bands such as Amon Amarth, Trivium, Machine Head, and Diamond Plate use the 6505+ and Marshall 1960b combo. If the pros use it, it must not be "lacking."

Amon Amarth and Trivium also use Mesa amps/cabs, and I believe AA was also endorsed by Krank at one point (around 2006-07 when they were heavily promoting the Krankenstein). Trivium also use several other amps in the studio. You'll see a lot of 6505s and 1960s when bands are touring overseas because that's generally what promoters can easily rent for them to use and it's common for bands to share gear because of logistics. Knowing how to use/adjust/set up gear is as important as what you have.

ShaolinLambKiller wrote:

everyone has their select tastes. I like how you keep refrencing the pros as if that's the only word anyone should take. Cause if that's the case there are also just as many 'pro' bands that use Orange Amps.

In reply to Zodijackyl; If you want a WARM black metal tone, then yes a tube amp is the way you want to go. Marshall 1960's are also extremely suggested. Everyone has their own opinions, but when it comes down to it a tube amp running through a 1960 cab will almost always sound amazing as long as you play with your settings correctly.

everyone has their select tastes. I like how you keep refrencing the pros as if that's the only word anyone should take. Cause if that's the case there are also just as many 'pro' bands that use Orange Amps.

Not saying that pros don't use Orange Amps, I have an Orange combo myself (very nice travel amp). All I'm saying is that what I've found is that you have to be careful with what you use them with because they can muddy up your tone due to their density. The only professional band I know that uses Orange cabs is Jim Root from Slipknot. I would like to hear of a few other examples if anyone has any. I know Jim uses Orange heads too, not a Peavey 6505+, which I've found to sound muddy through Orange and brutal through Marshall.